


The professor's husband

by tothemovies (jarofactonbell)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, M/M, domestic married uni lecturers AU, mentions of various other characters but it's just the kibashino show here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 18:04:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18946108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarofactonbell/pseuds/tothemovies
Summary: Everyone knows Professor Inuzuka Kiba from the veterinary sciences major is a big softie. Heart of gold. Loud, fun, loving, all the kids would die for him. Long hair, facial markings, sharp teeth, has a dog he sometimes lets loose on campus for stressing uni students to pet and nap with, apparentlymarriednow -And the target of all of Professor Aburame’s affections.Look, the Bug Professor might be married himself too, but clearly his heart still goes out for Professor Inuzuka whenever the guy walks in to visit, or someone mentions him, or anything that has dogs in it - the man smiles, and he looks so visibly happy that he gets a halo to boot - and the kids...the kids aren’t angry, but the kids need somewhere to blame and these two are both married and they feel bad about their spouses and just -The kids stage an intervention.





	The professor's husband

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Professor's Wife](https://archiveofourown.org/works/173254) by [foolish_mortal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolish_mortal/pseuds/foolish_mortal). 



> happy birthday laura i love you, local citizen of the kibashino nation, hope you rot on the domesticity

 

There's this rumour that Professor Aburame from the entomology department has a spouse who makes his thick padded cloaks smell like they've been sitting in vats of flowers for twenty years and enchanted the damned things so that they’re free from the curse that befalls the common people: creases. This spouse sent from the heaven makes the best kind of lunch ranging across all cuisines and sometimes the young professor shares traditional tea sweets around, _handmade,_ mind you, and close to twenty students beg him to bring this spouse in so they can craft an entire kitchen from scratch in honour of the person who crafted god-like morsels for mortals such as them.

From the biomedicine section, Professor Inuzuka, lovable, loud and dog, always laugh so hard and long whenever sweet and unassuming first years moon about the latest piece of food they cinched off Professor Aburame or the newest fragrance the man is wearing on his wrists. He laughs like there's a joke there, but he doesn't tell anyone what, and in the grand scheme of things, nobody has a burning need to be in on the joke, so they mostly ignore him whenever he gets into those coughing fits because he laughs too much and hacks out half a lung.

Professor Aburame remains impervious to all of this and continues existing in his stupidly done hair and glowing, healthy skin and floral smelling cloaks with a lunchbox the quality of a mini banquet.

  


“I'm back!” Kiba calls out at the door, tapping the wooden thing shut with a kick of his foot.

“You better not be kicking doors in my house, Inuzuka Kiba!” A soft voice rings from the kitchen, emerging in a wane face, donning a Doraemon apron and green pyjamas.

“It’s my house too, you're forgetting,” he chimes in, toeing off his shoes.

The man in the apron purses a lip and rolls his eyes, turning to walk away.

It's as good as an _I suppose you may have this one_ as they can get.

“How was things?” He floats by, knocking his knuckles onto the man's arm as a form of greeting.

It takes roughly five seconds for the assortment of emotions to sort themselves out on his husband’s face.

“I feel like the head examiner wants to put my brain through a blender,” Shino surmises, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses, “and I came close to making that image a reality.”

“If you need to work, I can cook,” Kiba suggests, shrugging off his jacket and draping it on the back of a kitchen chair.

The other seems to consider it.

“Come on, I cook good, you cook mediocre, let’s work out a middle ground ‘ere -”

Shino waves him away, fingers making their way to his hair, the dry split ends testament to how much care he's devoting into himself lately.

“I already started, so the most you can do is help me get food done quickly,” the high hair bun monster grumbles, literally having a stress-induced panic breakdown in their kitchen.

Kiba puts down his foot, tapping it on the ground.

“I want you to promise me to shut up, sit down, and do what you have to do right after dinner. No cleaning. No packing up. Just don’t stress yourself out over things I can cover, please, Shino,” he smothers down the worry in his tone with a shit-eating grin, knowing that well, it does nothing, but he loves to pretend, leave him to rot.

Shino must've heard it still, rolling his shoulders and neck in a pretence of nonchalance. Damnable ears of a bloodhound.

“I worry,” he continues.

This one doesn't dignify him with a response, just turns to their kitchen, feet padding away.

“Remember to fold and put away laundry,” he reminds him.

He grins, all teeth. That is the loudest and clearest _do what you want_ as Aburame Shino can get.

  


“I forgot to ask,” Shino glances forlornly at the stack of laptop and tablet Kiba confiscated from him because _it’s dinner time, Shino, and we don’t eat and go on our electronics at the same time, multitasking is a myth, I’m an educator,_ **_you’re_ ** _an educator, we both should know this._ “How was your work?”

“Remember Shikadai, the one I told you that sits in the back, does minimum work, but rolls up to exams and gets A pluses all the time?” He picks up a piece of pickled radish, bites the end off and holds the rest to Shino, one hand under the vegetable so it doesn’t fall to a tragic fate on their table.

“Uh, weird straight and curly hair combo, no more glasses, starting to sport a goatee like his old man?” Shino’s eyes close, trying to recall the vague outlines of his student, because Shikadai is like a mirage. On and off appearances, and at best he keeps his outfit the same for about two weeks. Nobody really know what he looks like anymore, nor do they care to.

“The very one,” Kiba widens his eyes, holding up the radish to Shino’s mouth who obliges his daily feeding, lips closing in around the tip of his chopsticks. “Is it alright, or should we keep it in the jar for longer?”

The other man chews thoughtfully, pushing all food to one side of his mouth, one cheek inflating. “Maybe,” he swallows, “a week more will make it sourer.”

“More sour?” Kiba ponders, twirling his chopsticks.

“Sourer? I don’t know if that’s a word. I think it is,” the overworked one scrounges more rice into his mouth. “I’ll look it up later. Now tell me more about Shikadai. Shikadai studies veterinary sciences?”

“Biomed. I was taking over a few undergrad compulsory bio and chem foundation classes. I know, it’s weird, my timetable is never the same. Anyways, get this,” he sets down his chopsticks, leaning closer. “Kid’s won an internship to Kumo,” Kiba whispers, all conspiratorial.

Shino’s eyes are blown wide. “Heavens. Really? _Really_ really?”

“I know! I _know!”_

“But he doesn’t even study in class, as far as you tell me. He doesn’t come to class? Have you seen him at all this month? This semester?” It used to be creepy that Kiba knows the exact number of days some kids used to come to school by, but really, Kiba tells him everything, so well that Shino can probably pick out the difference between the Hyuga twins in the classroom sitting next to each other wearing the exact same outfit and sporting the exact same haircut.

“I don’t know,” Kiba hisses back, stealing a piece of seaweed from Shino’s chopstick grip. “He went up to me today and said, and I quote, verbatim, _Hi sir, I’m leaving to Kumo in two weeks, I got an internship, thank you for your lectures._ ”

“He didn’t even _come_ to your lectures! It doesn’t make any sense.” Shino’s jaw drops open, a hand slapping at Kiba’s wrist. “Stop stealing my food, brat.”   

“Maybe these are events that science can’t explain,” he sneaks the seaweed into his mouth, chewing, nodding sagely.

“Uh huh,” Shino’s eyes narrow. “His test average?”

“What, you don’t know?” He grins, a teasing edge to his mouth.

Shino rolls his eyes, scooping up his rice into his mouth. “I don’t know his recent one, but I know his average up till now. Solid 97. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it very well.”

“Just doesn’t come to class outside the required minimum,” he shrugs. “It’s just...so weird. I don’t know if he’s around most of the time.”

“He should reconsider joining the secret forces instead of the medicine sector. They’ll need people like him there,” Shino snorts.

“What, the wagging type?” He raises one eyebrow.

“No,” Shino rolls his eyes, “the silent and brilliant type.”

“Ah, so like you on both instances ~”

“Okay, first of all, I started wagging class in third year because my research project became too much - “ Shino argues and Kiba cuts in gleefully.

“That’s quitter’s talk ~! You, of all people, should have been able to juggle it all out, you just didn’t want to.”

“ - and second of all, nothing the professor sat outside of what I already know, so I was preparing materials and snatching good grades despite appearing like a truant.”

“Pretty sure that was just your fashion sense, Aburame-chan,” he giggles, sincerely cruel.

“Not all of us can be bothered to dress in whatever you wear, all the time,” Shino parries back, but it isn’t as much of an insult as a thinly veiled acquiescence of his style. Kiba knows it’s good. He doesn’t need his husband’s approval of it. He continues his string of cruel giggling, stealing more from Shino’s bowl.

“Okay, first of all, I have more suits between the two of us, and they need to be pristine, otherwise the kids will have my head,” Shino snaps, the familiarity of this very same discussion recurring as a meme and less of a problem.

“Is that what you say to yourself when you hang up all of your suits and my shirts, Shino-chan?” He grins, very feral and fully being a shit. “You can say what you want, sweetheart, but if you wield an iron ever again, the house will burn down.”

“Stop exaggerating my incompetence!” Shino barks, appalled that he could even fathom to elicit those words aloud. A blasphemy. Truly a sin under this good Shinto household.

“They're not exaggerations if they're the truths and you're just too deep in denial to admit it,” Kiba cackles, pushing his chair back and stacking the bowls one on top of another.

Shino throws him a rude gestures over his head and puts away their crockery. Kiba literally _breathed,_ and he already has to fight this person.

“Don’t wash the dishes! I’m doing that! I’ll fight you if I see you there, washing them!”

 

(Shino predictably did try to crawl to the sink to run the tap and Kiba had to dash out from inside his study, hip checking him and throwing an entire Hamlet-esque soliloquy to beat Shino back into being a recluse inside his study. He does the dishes with too much triumph than the chore rightfully deserves.)

  


 

One child, Wasabi, had begun making her way to Kiba by the time he finished shooing away a horde of stressed engineering kids who thought a vet surgeon could answer about thermodynamics.

He knows, but not a whole crazy lot. Leave him alone. He didn’t even study it.

“Hey sensei,” Wasabi prompts. “Kiba-san. Doctor Inuzuka.”

“Is this about a late essay,” he’s packing away everything and trying to see if he can make it to the clinic in time to help Konohamaru. “Because I don’t know anything. I haven’t seen anything. Unaware. When it gets there, then it gets there.”

Wasabi’s downtrodden expression immediately brightens up, all the thunder and pain and sorrow in her eyes fading away. “Sensei, I would literally adopt a dog for you.”

“Don’t do that,” he laughs, shoving a notebook to ward her eager arms to wrap around him. “I’m legally obligated to take that dog away from you and raise it in my home, and my partner would not love that.”

He should have realised he made a mistake, because now the entire campus’ gossip mill is going to be fed for the _week_ and he stupidly contributed to it.

Ah, but this is Wasabi. He’s safe. Mostly.

“Partner?” She blinks, mostly confused and probably isn’t out here trying to wheedle information from him to feed the gossip pits.

“Yeah, Shi-chan is really extreme about everything - either we both get pets, or we don’t,” he rolls his eyes, entirely fond, and speed-walking out of there. “I have a lab with Maru, so follow until then, or scram, Sabi-chan. I’m not waiting!”

She squeaks out something that was probably _Go on, leave me to rot,_ as the dramatic teenagers do, and trots away, typing on her phone while she’s balancing her books in her arms.

Kiba rolls his eyes as he swings into Konohamaru’s lab and extricates a lot of liver bits from the boy’s hair, standing as a supportive post as he collapses against him.

“Doctor!” The class cheers as he waves, a solid canine flashing at the class. “Are you teaching?”

“Only if you’re playing nice to Sarutobi-sensei,” he returns back playfully. “Finish up, and then I’ll teach. I’m watching all of you, and I saw that, Iwabe, but I’m choosing not to comment on it. Don’t make me call you out a second time.”

Iwabe goes about as red as the samples before him and very carefully sets everything he was not supposed to have his fingers in away from him on the bench, standing a good foot away from the crime scene.

Konohamaru cries when the class finishes a good ten minutes early, everything turned in - and just leaves all the brats to him.

He promised. He’s going to deliver.

His phone only shows two messages. One from Naruto - _hey hinata is back, wanna pick her up? -_ and another from Shino - _Ring me when you’re free. We need to talk._

  


Kiba strategically answers his husband’s text first, because it has _I found out about the number of odd socks you’ve managed to covet away from my watchful eyes_ all over it, and he’s not keen to reenact that specific talk over again, so he calls Shino before his carefully curated sock drawer is upended and he has to organise that again when he gets back home -

“You took my watch,” is what Shino greets him with.

He lifts his wrist and feels a nervous string of hysterical laughter bubbling out of his throat - so he laughs anyway, big and ugly, into the call.

“Whoop, sorry, we leave them in the same place, and I had an early class. Must’ve grabbed it when I left this morning,” he stuffs his fist into his mouth, holding it in. “I thought it was something like, divorce-inducing -”

“We mutually ripped up that marriage certificate. I don’t think there are proofs of our marriage to even dispute a divorce over,” Shino sighs, severely tired but fond. “Try to return me and see how that will go.”

“Shi-chan, I thought I meant more to you than a way to incur the return policy on faulty spouses,” he hacks out a coughing laugh, laughing way too much and wheezing outside in a cramped science teacher lounge, with zero people paying attention to him, but still. He let slip a name. He should be careful, or else -

“Why do you think I married you for?” Shino’s tone shifts into something that he so often can’t put a finger on - something with a tinge of doubt. The self-assured Aburame Shino, bright, young, devastatingly kind and _pretty as heck,_ doubting himself. It’s almost an insult on Kiba’s abilities as his friend, husband and best friend. Gotta remedy this, gotta fix it before it becomes an actual Problem.

“I don’t know, Shi-chan, I thought we love each other and living together was just the next step in the relationship ladder - or was it, like, being in each other’s registries, I’m not too sure, I’m pulling out the bullet points from thin air -”

“Disgusting,” Shino interrupts him, definitely not even hiding a smile in his scoff. “And that wasn’t all of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“This isn’t about the socks, right? Because you can’t shame me, they’re somewhere in the house,” he quickly confesses, and realises his mistake a little too late as Shino goes silent, probably rummaging through his drawer and catching him right out on his words.

“No, Kiba, I already knew about the socks, that’s months old, no,” Shino returns, mumbling an apology for his absence - _sorry, I knocked over some files, I’m really out of it -_ “I wanted to know why Sarada, my lovely Uchiha girl, who took chemistry once in her first year and we haven’t talked since on campus, I was wondering why she came to me to tell you that you’re married to someone else besides me?”

There is an uncomfortable silence where he’s trying to see all the threads of connection and _how_ Uchiha Sarada could have arrived _there,_ to Shino, and - _what?_

“What,” he just echoes emptily into the call. _“What the fuck?”_

“They might have picked up on the fact that I am very fond of you,” Shino’s tone is too amused for this to be as serious as the bastard made it out to be. “The children are very protective of me. They think I need to be shielded from all heartbreak and pain, if possible.”

“Am _I_ a source of _pain and heartbreak_ for you, Professor Aburame?” His tone cannot decide if it’s trying to be amused or offended, and it twists his mouth in weird ways.

Shino legitimately _laughs_ at him.

“Of a sort, yes, yes you are,” Shino snorts, “Doctor Aburame.”

“Hey hey hey, my family is a matrilineal event, I don’t take your name since neither of us are women, don’t push that patriarchal agenda onto me, it won’t work,” he denies furiously, even though the stupid part of his brain that was very taken with some of the patriarchy’s romantic notions, one of them being ‘taking your husband’s name upon marriage’. It sounds cute, okay? They’re in the same family now. Same registry. He can visit Shino legally in the hospital whenever a freak accident happens and can confidently say ‘we’re in the same _koseki’_ without the stupid guilt of an unproposed ring in the back of his tie drawer, carefully tucked away.

“I’ve been following along with the patriarchy for generations -”

“Invalid! Inexcusable!” He shrieks, entirely endeared. “Also do you want to do anything about the I married someone that isn’t you allegations or are you just letting that fizzle out on its own?”

“Good question,” Shino hums. “Maybe we’ll deal with it when it gets too much. But right now I think it’s funny. It looks bad on you anyway, so I don’t care too much about it, and I get a nicer class. I want it to continue for as long as it can humanly stretch out, and then I want it to haunt you until you die after me. That’s what I want.”

“I thought we were doing a simultaneous lover’s suicide pact, or did the terms and conditions change since the last time we revised them?”

Shino tells him to _fuck off, and bring back some carrots, we’re going to make weird smoothies_ and Kiba chases, labours for that grumbled _I love you_ parting words from his husband’s unrelenting lips -

“Yes, fine, very well,” the tall and very not-green Grinch grouses, zero irritation in his voice. “I love you.”

“That’s a copy,” he yips, and Shino promptly hangs up.

Kiba calls back again to giggle _I wuv you too_ and gets hung up twice. He’s smiling way too bright when he returns to his packed lunch and Anko-sensei has to nudge him insistently to get him to calm down enough to revise over some essays _nobody_ has any idea how to read and apparently he’s the local expert on deciphering illegible handwriting.

“So,” sensei hedges next to him. “You’re married.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, yes,” he waves distractedly, returning back to the paragraph that he was reading over. “Didn’t wanna broadcast it to the entire campus.”

“Lucky person,” Anko concedes, knows that it’s all that he will slip up on the state of his marital status. “Good luck with that essay.”

She might have said _Poor Shino_ under her breath, but he’s nearly done with this essay and then he can go outside and call Naruto to not pick up Hinata before he and Tenten get there before Neji, and then he can bring Hinata to his home on the basis of first dibs and they can all catch up and it’ll be a nice pre-anniversary present, excuse him for not focusing elsewhere.

 

(The dinner with Hinata is extra nice. Shino now has someone to gang up on when Kiba is up on his bullshit. She laughs until she can’t breathe when Kiba rehashes everything that goes wrong in his dissection labs and the Great Heart Frisbee Game after midterms, she laughs even harder when she sees his sock drawer and they fall asleep on the couch in mildly uncomfortable slouches in the morning as they marathon through all the Lord of the Rings movies in the trilogy.)

  


 

Everyone knows Doctor Inuzuka Kiba from the veterinary sciences major is a big softie. Heart of gold. Loud, fun, loving, all the kids would die for him. Long hair, facial markings, sharp teeth, has a dog he sometimes lets loose on campus for stressing uni students to pet and nap with, apparently _married_ now -

And the target of all of Professor Aburame’s affections.

Look, the Bug Professor might be married himself too, but clearly his heart still goes out for Doctor Inuzuka whenever the guy walks in to visit, or someone mentions him, or anything that has dogs in it - the man _smiles,_ and he looks so visibly happy that he gets a halo to boot - and the kids...the kids aren’t angry, but the kids need somewhere to blame and these two are both married and they feel bad about their spouses and just -

The kids stage an intervention.

 

Kiba sneezes, as he feels a malicious intent descends onto his dog and his name. Shino takes the chance to swipe his phone away from him to talk to Hana and since there’s no conceivable way that he can dig out Shino’s phone without actually _dying while failing to get the goddamn phone,_ he can’t do the same and call Torune.

“This is mean,” he tells his husband, who’s supposed to love him, not _bully_ him.

Akamaru snorts out a laugh and he gasps in open affront. _Both of them, teaming up against him._

“Shi-chan, you have to let Akamaru in your place. Kaa-san is considering staging a separation if Kiba is away from the damned dog any longer,” Hana calls out.

“Was she really?” Shino murmurs to him.

“I don’t know but it sound serious,” he whispers back from the corner of his mouth. “Aiya, Akamaru, you big baby. You can’t just be with me all the time, you know? You’re too old for that now.”

“I cannot believe you’ve managed to pull it off,” Shino crouches down to ruffle Akamaru’s ears, leaning away as the dog chases him with his lolling tongue. “Being separated from Akamaru. Maybe I’ll rethink about the pet ban.”

“Oh good,” Hana mutters from the call. “Figure it out. I’m hanging up.”

“How courteous of you to drop by,” Shino humours her, and gets a loud bout of screaming in return. The call stutters off as Akamaru chases after a falling leaf in the wind, and Kiba idly calls to him to stop, lingering in the background to walk in tandem with Shino.

“Don’t stress about it,” he tells his husband, knocking their knuckles together.

Shino grasps his fingers, pulling instead of lacing their joints together, until they’re just slapping each other’s hand on a footpath, with Akamaru barking complaints at them further up ahead.

“If the glass breaks,” Shino looks at him darkly, “I’ll bend your spine.”

“Break it like you mean it, lover boy, don’t bend it like a coward,” he challenges, and gets a foot to the back of his knee. “Ow, don’t do that, I’m weak.”

“Weak enough to talk home by yourself. I’m taking the dog.”

“No! Akamaru, don’t betray me, boy, oh _come on!”_

 

 

The kids stage an intervention. But Kiba doesn’t know that.

Shino has an inkling, but once again, it will come at Kiba’s expense and he’s much too invested in what the children will do that he is lax on properly scolding them on the drawbacks of gossiping and assuming things themselves.

Kiba, because a class had been moved, walks him to his own lecture, chattering and flipping pages at his arm in several failed attempts at garnering his attention while he walks briskly and almost in a jog to his classroom, so he can kick out the anxious kids who want to stress about the essays the weekend prior.

“Out,” he tells Boruto, not unkindly. “Class starts in ten minutes. You may scream then.”

“But _sensei -”_

“No, after,” he holds open the door and Boruto skulks out, not before the boy throws a dirty glance at Kiba who sidesteps him easily with a long stride. “Don’t stir up trouble, Hyuga-san.”

“Yes, uncle,” the boy dutifully intones back, and the door swings shut.

“A handful, that one is. Don’t know how Hinata just decided - you know what, I’m going to have shared custody of this rebellious teenage menace because one isn’t enough, I want another,” Kiba snorts and relents his grip on Shino’s briefcase, allowing him to set up his laptop for class.

He can hear shuffling, and he hasn’t spotted anyone. It’s impressive, and frankly concerning, how teenagers can band together to do all this but can’t concentrate the same energy for their assignments.

“Love is an inexplicable concept,” he murmurs, as he plugs in all the right things in all the right places. Kiba is still lounging about, probably spotting a few kids moving in and out from under tables and snorting quietly back to him. “Shouldn’t you go?”

“What, getting rid of me so easily?” Kiba glances back with a glint in his eyes, the one where it’s a definite promise that he’s going to smile like _that_ and kiss Shino breathless regardless of the place they’re in.

“You have class, and frankly I don’t particularly want you to be maimed by my well-meaning students,” he looks down, so that he can tap at the ring around his neck, as Kiba looks around and declares triumphantly _Ah ha, found two!_

“I’ll stay, it’s fine,” Kiba insists.

Shino sighs. Ten minutes had already passed. Boruto is coming back in, and just - his headache is coming back with a vengeance.

“It really isn’t -”

Boruto starts screaming first. _“You absolute bastard, Inuzuka!”_

He tacks in a hasty and absolutely obligatory  _Doctor_ as he furiously accuses Kiba of  _something._

Kiba politely smiles at them, and looks too amused for the kids to be as angry as they intended to be.

“Sensei, we’re so sorry we intervened too late -” Denki runs at his side, lips trembling. “We will - we will make it right for you, sensei! We promise!”

“Make what right?” Kiba looms over his class, who suddenly crowds around him in a vaguely cohesive human wall, baring teeth at the vet professor - his husband - who is entertaining a smile that really is just asking for trouble at this point.

“Stop breaking sensei’s heart!” Iwabe accuses, mildly guilty because he loves Kiba and he’s conflicted over it. Kiba instead coos over his execution, and pats his beanie down to an acceptable height, pulling himself up and to his full height, grinning down with an easy air of a man who’s used to being blamed for things not of his own doing and he must now perform spectacular methods of damage control to quell the fires erupting all around him.

Shino has trouble projecting over the cacophony of kids hurling various forms of insults at Kiba - all mild, and oddly specific to how affectionate his husband is with him - until he and Kiba tower over Sumire who frowns up at the two of them and refuses to budge, that he casts a weary glance at Kiba, throwing his head to the door. _Go. Don’t come back._

Kiba casts him a sympathetic smile before leaning very close to his mouth, hand curling around the back of his neck. Someone gasps in open affront, and Shino waits for the punchline of this ostentatious display of rare and open affection in front of spectating eyes.

Kiba’s mouth swerves to his ear, a smile tugged away in the corner of his mouth, murmuring a string of words, before straightening and distancing himself, turning swiftly on his feet.

There is a ring that flashes on his left hand and Shino dutifully takes out his own counterpart of the same ring from under his turtleneck, displaying it to observing eyes.

“We’re starting now. It’s two minutes into the lesson already,” he looks at the crowd of children who are breaking out in various tones of shock and appal and sheer terror -

“I will explain,” he sighs, put upon, long suffering, “once we are all seated.”

There is a mad scramble to the seats in record time and he hopes Kiba made all the points he wanted to make because this is Shino’s reality now.

He briefly thinks back to all the times he had allowed events to perpetuate at Kiba’s expense. This must be revenge.

It is finely curated, about to be as fine as Kiba’s hair is going to get when he gets back home today and runs a brush through it and pull out half a head of hair. Just that Inuzuka wait.

“Do forgive my husband,” he sighs, when the class had dispersed into various spaces of the lecture hall and calmed down considerably from Kiba’s flashy exit. “He thinks it funny to worsen the situation.”

Before chaos can descend first from this classroom and spreading to the entire campus, he holds up a hand, before the screaming starts.

“I am not opening up the floor for questions. And you are not to harass Dr Inuzuka about any details of our married life. And yes, he does iron my shirts and puts laundry softener in the wash. You can either stay and pay attention, or you are welcome to leave.”

Shockingly, zero student left. But they don’t pay attention throughout the class, and they stare up at him as if they’re finally seeing a new light, so he closes his eyes and thinks about how he and Kiba can move that glass cupboard somewhere else so Akamaru can come and live with them from now onward.

 

Everyone knows Doctor Inuzuka Kiba from the veterinary sciences major is a big softie. Heart of gold. Loud, fun, loving, all the kids would die for him. Long hair, facial markings, sharp teeth, has a dog he sometimes lets loose on campus for stressing uni students to pet and nap with, apparently  _married_ now -

To Professor Aburame of entomology.

Same professor who exists in an untouchable world of fabric softened clothes and creaseless coats with lunch the same quality of a rich people banquet - who's useless at chores, now that Dr Inuzuka decides to tell them all about his husband's shortcomings and they would get an encore of the professor returning the same sentiments. 

These two fight  _exactly_ like a married couple, and the kids wonder why they thought these two weren't in the first place.

**Author's Note:**

> yes! this was inspired by the amazing xxxholic douwata fic because no, i'm not over it and yes, kibashino
> 
> please ask me questions on these places i need friends: [twitter](https://twitter.com/tacobell_com), [curious cat](https://curiouscat.me/jenny_benny) and [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/tacomakers-central)


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